Personal use radio frequency (RF) transceivers such as cellular phones continue to decrease in size approaching cigarette-pack size for convenient carrying in shirt pockets. Small transceivers are severely limited in their capability to include physically large components such as occasional-use digital memory banks. At the same time transceivers are being designed to include short message service (SMS) message capability. SMS messages are transmitted text which can be transmitted digitally to portable digital wireless transceivers such as cellular telephones where the messages may be displayed on a liquid crystal display. A typical message may, for example, include instructions to call a particular customer telephone number or to call the office. This service enables the cellular phone to finction as similar to a combination beeper and answering machine to record and later display brief messages transmitted in the absence of the user or while the user is otherwise occupied. While SMS has not yet become commercially available in the United States it is part of the European Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and is the subject of interim industry standards IS-136 and IS-137 in the United States.
However, the diminishing size of portable transceivers, whether RF or infrared, presents a challenge regarding the inclusion of adequate memory capability to receive, record and playback on demand a number of recorded texts.
In addition to the problem of adding memory capability to transceivers being shrunk in size, it is also desirable to be able to add external communications means to facilitate communications to other networks through other communications links further compounding the size problem.